I just think this presentation on branding and how it works is fantastic! The concepts here are so clear! I think if it’s applied to website content optimization and user experience, it should eliminate the “I don’t get it” response. I’m going to try passing the message on.
Let’s talk a bit about branding! Isn’t your brand not what you, the big company, say it is, but what your customers say it is? The brand is how it feels to identify with this product. It is its personality. And unfortunately, usually it falls into this giant canyon between strategy and creativity, hanging by its fingernails, more on one wall of the canyon than the other.
I submit that in the world of web professionals, it is user experience people educated in analytics who best bridge the gap between marketing strategy on the web and the creativity that makes each product have a unique identity.
Strategy is necessary for us to hone in on what our customers/visitors are looking for, what appeals to them, where they are going. It is STRATEGY that helps us to identify when we have a charismatic brand, a brand for which there is no substitute!
What makes a brand memorable however is CREATIVITY.
Web analytics is to Strategy as User Experience is to Design. From web analytics we gather data, and analyze it to direct our marketing strategy. From user experience planning and analysis we are able to properly think through and simplify to create the smoothest and easiest experience, the one that directs the look and feel of our visual design. Each is the foundation on which the other should be built. Most often, this foundation is haphazardly slapped together. Would you take a quick 5 second glance at your architect’s blueprints before building your dream house? No, but that’s essentially what happens every day with websites.
There are 5 Disciplines in brand building according to The Brand Gap:
- Differentiate: Focus. Who are you? What are you? Why does it matter?
- Collaborate: Use the best of the best, and make it work.
- Innovate: Be ready to scare the hell out of everyone. Zig when others zag.On the Web: Get rid of extraneous information! Clear a path to the goal.
- Validate: bring the audience into the creative process. Start a dialogue, and let it help direct your strategy and creative direction.On the Web: Validate and A/B test or multivariate test, monitor your Analytics and Adword campaigns and analyze the results. Tests measure 5 things: Distinctiveness, relevance, memorability, extendability and depth of meaning.
- Cultivate: build a living brand, control its look and feel but let its character adapt. Distribute it, manage it.
Build a sustainable competitive advantage. User experience and Web analytics are part of the package that delivers this advantage. Jump over that part and leap right into design and development without ever looking back, and you are flying blind.
Science + Intuition.
Strategy + Creative.
Web Analytics + User Experience.
There is just no reason to fly blind anymore. With our eyes open, we can create a new kind of magic.
